The Closing Of The Western Mind

'Entertaining... An excellent and readable account of the development of Christian doctrine' New York Times

An elegant story, engagingly told. Freeman has a talent for narrative history and for encapsulating the more arcane disputes of ancient historians and theologians

There is much here to admire... It is a panoramic view that Freeman handles with grace, erudition and lucidity

A triumph... Engrossing... Successfully realized... Wholly admirable... Freeman is to be congratulated on a broad-brush approach that throws the main issue into sharp focus... [He] has added a new level of understanding

Charles Freeman is the author of The Greek Achievement and Egypt, Greece and Rome: Civilisations of the Ancient Mediterranean. He lives in Suffolk.

The conversion of the emperor Constantine to Christianity in 368 AD brought a transformation to Christianity and to western civilization, the effects of which we still feel today. Previously, the Roman empire had absorbed and sustained the Greek intellectual tradition which, in the astronomy of Ptolemy, the medicine of Galen and the philosophy of Plotinus, reached new heights. Constantine turned Rome from the relatively open, tolerant and pluralistic civilisation of the Hellenistic world, towards a culture that was based on the rule of fixed authority. The century after Constantine's conversion saw the development of an alliance between church and state which stifled freedom of thought and the tradition of Greek rationalism which was intrinsic to it. The churches enjoyed enormous patronage and exemptions from tax, and in return allowed the emperors to take on the definition and enforcement of an increasingly narrow religious orthodoxy. 
 
This book explores how the European mind was closed by the revolution of the fourth century. It looks at the rise of the 'divine' monarch, the struggle as Christianity painfully separated itself from Judaism, the conflict between faith and reason, and the problems in finding any kind of rational basis for Christian theology. In these centuries, a turning-point for Western civilisation, we see the development of Christian anti-Semitism, the origins of the opposition of religion and science and the roots of Christianity's discomfort with sex, issues which haunt the Christian churches to this day. 
 
The Closing of the Western Mind is a major work of history. Wide-ranging and ambitious, its central theme is the relationship between the two wellsprings of our civilisation, the Judaeo-Christian and the Greco-Roman, and how the tensions between them have created the culture in which we continue to live, think and believe.

Charles Freeman

Even if theology and ancient history are subjects you avoid, you should not miss this book. It's lucidity and critical challenge are a feast for the mind

Astonishing... Breathtaking... The sad history of heresy-hunting starts here

Freeman has a talent for narrative history and for encapsulating the more arcane disputes of ancient historians and theologians

Heretics, Pagans and the Christian State

In AD 381, Theodosius, emperor of the eastern Roman empire, issued a decree in which all his subjects were required to subscribe to a belief in the Trinity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This edict defined Christian orthodoxy and brought to an end a lively and wide-ranging debate about the nature of the Godhead; all other interpretations were now declared heretical. 
 
Moreover, for the first time in a thousand years of Greco-Roman civilization free thought was unambiguously suppressed. Yet surprisingly this political revolution, intended to bring inner cohesion to an empire under threat from the outside, has been airbrushed from the historical record. Instead, it has been claimed that the Christian Church had reached a consensus on the Trinity which was promulgated at the Council of Constantinople in AD 381. 
 
In this groundbreaking new book, Freeman argues that Theodosius's edict and the subsequent suppression of paganism not only brought an end to the diversity of religious and philosophical beliefs throughout the empire but created numerous theological problems for the Church, which have remained unsolved. The year AD 381, Freeman concludes, marked 'a turning point which time forgot'.

Charles Freeman

Praise for AD 381

Even if theology and ancient history are subjects you avoid, you should not miss this book. It's lucidity and critical challenge are a feast for the mind

Astonishing... Breathtaking... The sad history of heresy-hunting starts here

Freeman has a talent for narrative history and for encapsulating the more arcane disputes of ancient historians and theologians

Even if theology and ancient history are subjects you avoid, you should not miss this book. It's lucidity and critical challenge are a feast for the mind

Astonishing... Breathtaking... The sad history of heresy-hunting starts here

Freeman has a talent for narrative history and for encapsulating the more arcane disputes of ancient historians and theologians

Even if theology and ancient history are subjects you avoid, you should not miss this book. It's lucidity and critical challenge are a feast for the mind

Astonishing... Breathtaking... The sad history of heresy-hunting starts here

Freeman has a talent for narrative history and for encapsulating the more arcane disputes of ancient historians and theologians

Books by Charles Freeman

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